Introduction to Quest Warrior

Quest Taunt Warrior, just like any other Quest deck, originates from the Journey to Un’Goro. It was actually the first really viable Quest deck back in that expansion, but soon it got pushed out of the meta by more powerful options. However, in The Witchwood we see a resurgence of the Quest decks – some of them got new tools, other got stronger because of the meta change, Quest Warrior is something in between.

The deck’s main game plan is to play defensively throughout the early and mid game, playing Taunt after Taunt to finish the Quest. Quest’s reward is a 4/2 weapon, which turns your Hero Power into “Deal 8 damage to a random enemy” – so at the cost of 2 mana per turn, you basically become a Ragnaros the Firelord for the rest of the game. While you lose your defensive Hero Power, being able to deal 8 damage every turn is a massive win condition – hitting your opponent puts him on a quick clock, while clearing minions is a big value win. Meanwhile, you can still drop more and more Taunts to keep yourself safe.

At first, Odd (Baku the Mooneater) Quest Warrior builds were tested, but it turned out that dropping cards such as Drywhisker Armorer, Warpath and Blood Razor makes the deck much worse in this Paladin-infested meta. It might still be a consideration if the meta changes, but right now it looks like the normal build is better.

Deck Import

Quest Warrior Mulligan Strategy & Guide

The mulligan section is divided into two parts – against fast decks and against slow decks. Fast decks are generally the Aggro decks (e.g. Odd Face Hunter) or high tempo Midrange decks (e.g. Even Paladin). Slow decks are slower Midrange and Control decks.

Vs Fast Decks

Important: You do not want to keep Fire Plume's Heartagainst Aggro! Always keeping your Quest is a common mistake – you often want to mulligan it away. A good example would be Odd Face Hunter – Quest is absolutely pointless in that matchup. Maybe Even Paladin? You also don’t need your Quest – even if you finish it, the 8 damage Hero Power would be absolutely inconsistent due to the amount of Tokens they put on the board. Tempo Mage is yet another example (Armor Hero Power is much more important). So, for example, if 90% of the Hunters you face are Face Hunter, you don’t want to keep the Quest. Yes, sometimes you will face a Spell Hunter and you will regret, but you will increase your win rate heavily against those aggressive decks decks. You also want to mulligan it away against Paladin and Rogue.

Higher Priority (keep every time):

Drywhisker Armorer – 2/2 that will usually give you 4-10 Armor? It’s a great keep in all of those aggressive matchups, especially board-flood ones.

Warpath – Keep in aggressive matchups, thanks to its flexibility. You actually often use it on Turn 2 as just a Whirlwind, but if you need 2 AoE damage on T4 or 3 AoE damage on T6 it’s also good.

Acolyte of Pain – Most of the time, Acolyte of Pain makes things awkward for the opponent, especially if he has a bunch of 1/1’s. If he ignores it, it combos really well with Warpath next turn. You should usually get two cards from it, which means digging deeper into your deck to find the right cards.

Tar Creeper – Great defensive 3-drop – it should at least slow down the opponent’s aggression by quite a bit.

Blood Razor – Hands down the best card you can have against Aggro. It often clears the board on the turn you play it AND makes your opponent’s turn difficult, as he can’t play any 1 health minions.

Lower Priority (keep only if certain conditions are met):

Stonehill Defender – If you don’t have the other 3-drops – playing something on T3 is really important, and Acolyte or Tar Creeper are usually better, but Stonehill is also good if you don’t have one of them. Against Hunters, it has higher priority than Acolyte of Pain, because you don’t want to take any unnecessary damage.

Lower Priority (keep only if certain conditions are met):

Quest Warrior Play Strategy

Vs Fast Decks

If you read the mulligan section, you will understand that Quest is not your win condition in majority of the fast matchups. You would lose MUCH more games by starting with one card less (so you reduce your chance to draw a removal, weapon or the right Taunt early) than you would fin by finishing the Quest and shooting them with 8 damage Hero Power.

Against Aggro, you play like a normal Control deck – you control the board and try to survive. The longer the game goes, the higher your chance to win is – you have access to bigger Taunts, more AoE etc. Early and mid game is most important, which is another reason why you don’t need your Quest.

The deck runs quite a lot of different board clears – 2x Warpath, 1x Reckless Flurry, 2x Blood Razor, 2x Brawl and 2x Primordial Drake. However, knowing your enemy is really important, because you want to know which AoEs are best to use and when. Generally, Warpath is the most flexible AoE, so you want to save it as long as possible – it can answer both small and mid-sized minions. You might want to use Reckless Flurry when you still have some Armor – e.g. if you anticipate that your opponent is going to push hard and you will lose the Armor next turn, it might be wise to drop it. Brawl is random, but good in a way that it can clear bigger minions – so if you face a fast deck that has one or two big minions, you might want to save Brawl for them. Primordial Drake’s main advantage is that it comes with a body, but the 2 AoE damage part is important. Try to squeeze it whenever you need a Taunt on top of an AoE.

Keep in mind that most of the Aggro decks have multiple ways to refill their hand and/or the board – using your only AoE against even Paladin when the board isn’t very threatening might not be the best idea, because now he might drop Call to Arms and just refill it.

Phantom Militia is generally a bad early game card, but don’t hesitate to play it as a 2/4 Taunt on Turn 3 if you have no other play. Yes, it’s not optimal, but it’s still much better than skipping your turn. Do not save it until you can play it 2-3 times.

One cool interaction is Blood Razor replacing another Blood Razor (or alternatively, the Quest weapon replacing a Blood Razor). On Turn 8, playing 2x Blood Razor will deal 1 AoE damage 3 times, which can sometimes be useful. The best part about those multiple 1 damage AoEs (so Blood Razor and Warpath) is that they work very well vs Divine Shields and/or Deathrattles. E.g. if your opponent has a board of 2-3 health Murlocs and plays Gentle Megasaur, adapting them with the “Deathrattle: Summon 2x 1/1” option in the late game, you can play Warpath 4 times and clear everything.

So, basically, that is your plan. Keep clearing the board and playing the Taunts. If you draw the Quest you’ve mulliganed away, there is no harm in playing it, you might be able to finish it sometimes. However, sometimes you do not want to play the weapon reward – 2 Armor Hero Power might sometimes be better than the 8 damage one, when you’re at very low health in particular. You can still use it as a finisher – weapon hit + Hero Power is 12 damage + whatever you have on the board can add up to ~20 damage or something. Even if your opponent has minions on the board, you still have 5 mana to squeeze in e.g. a Blood Razor or 2x Warpath.

Vs Slow Decks

Your matchups vs slow decks are quite different than those vs fast decks. You could say that at the point where most of the Aggro matchups finish, the REAL game against slow decks start.

Your #1 priority against slow decks if finishing your Quests. The Taunt minions are generally not very efficient – you don’t put a lot of pressure with them, they should be relatively easy to clear and they don’t give you much value. However, once you finish the Quest, your Hero Power will make up for that. It’s important to try to drop a Taunt minion every turn if you can. Ideally you’d want to finish your Quest around Turn 7-8. Both Stonehill Defender and Phantom Militia are super helpful when it comes to that. When it comes to Stonehill, don’t be too greedy – since your goal is to finish a Quest as quickly as possible, it’s often much better to keep e.g. a Goldshire Footman than for example a Giant Mastodon. The best pick, however, is another Stonehill – you get another +1 on the Quest and can potentially reroll if your other options were bad. If you already have means to finish the Quest in your hand, THEN you might pick some high value card, e.g. another The Lich King or Primordial Drake. Phantom Militia, on the other hand, is a good Turn 6 play – you don’t have any other 6 mana Taunts in this deck anyway, so filling your turn with two of them should bring you closer to finishing the Quest.

Since most of your removals are AoEs, they aren’t very helpful in Control matchups. You might stop playing Taunts and e.g. drop a Brawl or Reckless Flurry in case your opponent develops a solid board. For example, Cube Warlock matchup is really bad, because even though they’re a slow deck, they can put A LOT of pressure on you, that’s why clearing their minions is quite important. With only a single Execute, try to not waste it on some midrange minions you can block with Taunts easily – use it on something really threatening such as some 8/8.

After you finish your Quest, you want to equip the weapon as quickly as possible and start shooting the Hero Power every single turn. I mean it, unless you need full mana or else you would die, shoot it every single turn. However, don’t do that at the beginning of each turn – you want to set up for it first. For example, if you opponent drops a bunch of small minions, you want to AoE them down first. A natural reaction to you finishing the Quest will be playing multiple minions, which you can punish with Brawl.

With your new Hero Power, you no longer want to play the control role. You want to be the beatdown. As much as hitting the face instead of a minion might seem like a low-roll sometimes, you actually WANT the Hero Power to hit your opponent most of the time. Assuming no healing, all you need is three times 8 damage into their Hero and you can finish the rest with your weapon.

Since you will have 8 more mana to work with every turn, you want to either clear the board (in case of board flood) or drop some Taunts. Taunts should keep you relatively safe for a while, as long as you don’t completely lose the board control. The ideal scenario is putting lots of pressure on your opponent with Hero Power and then dropping a bigger Taunt like The Lich King. Now he has to both heal himself up, play some minions so your Hero Power won’t hit him again AND deal with your big guy. Such a situation is often a way to close out the game in such matchups, simply because your opponent won’t be able to do all of that at the same time.

Quest Warrior Card Substitutions

Unlike Control Warrior, a non-Odd Quest Warrior build is actually quite cheap. This specific list costs less than 7,000 Arcane Dust, but if you build it on the budget, you should be able to make it in the 3-4k range. Let me go through the Legendaries and Epics in this list and offer some potential replacements.

Fire Plume's Heart – This is the only expensive card that absolutely needs to stay there. The deck makes no sense without it.

Reckless Flurry & Brawl – Two of your Epic board clears. There are no real, direct replacements for them. You can use Whirlwind, which is effective against Aggro, but not so much against slower decks. You can also put in another single target removal – second copy of Execute or Fiery War Axe.

Keep in mind that FIVE or the Epic cards are AoE board clears. Missing one of them is fine, but if you miss all of them, then you really need to craft them, or you will be left with no ways to clear the board!

A Hearthstone player and writer from Poland, Stonekeep has been in a love-hate relationship with Hearthstone since Closed Beta. Over four years of playing and three years of writing about the game, he has achieved infinite Arena and multiple top 100 Legend climbs.

Actually i’m rank 5 and i’m meeting tons of ultra control decks such as jaina mage or odd fatigue warrior that’s why i consider adding azalina wich works very well as a tech card even if it’s suboptimal still looking for the best card to replace

Amazing solid deck i’ve pushed from rank 14 to rank 5 with 80% WR
i have 100% WR against Odd & Even paladins and odd rouge ,this deck is really powerful in the current meta i found myself struggle only against taunt druid

i made the following changes on my list:
-1 Tar creeper >>> +1 ooze ( good against cubelocks ,paladins ,rouges and hunters ,decks they run multiple weapons)
-1 Rotten applebaum >>> +1 Direhorn Hatchling (having a 5 mana 6/9 taunt is really good and most of the time you wont need the 4 heal from the applebaum at turn 5 )
-1 Primordial Drake >>> +1 Execute ( execute could save the day against giants, spiteful summoners and massive drops)
i personally run The lich king and its a good add but if you dont have it you u can replace it with any other taunt minion

Finally the deck absolutely worth it and its one of the cheapest competitive decks in this meta ,Good luck everyone.

IMHO flurry is too good against anything including turn 10 Gul’dan to be replaced. Cornered Sentry is really nice cause you could combo it with Armorer. It’s not a must have cause you could just pull it from Stonehill, but still it’s really solid. In general this deck is very powerful against almost anything (it has armor, board clears and strong win condition). Good deck to hit legend with on ranks 3-1.

yea totally you get get to legend if you are good of course if you never played quest warrior before you will need a bit of training and it might not be the best deck to climb a lot and fast since it’s a pretty slow deck but definetely worth it and super fun to play and if you crafted it already you have nothing to lose so just go for it !

Judging by your name, you’re probably joking. But anyway, this deck makes no sense without the Quest. It is a quest deck, and the quest is central to the deck. The rest of the deck is built around the quest.

Just added the full guide, including “Card Substitutions” section at the bottom – check it out. However, keep in mind that you don’t want to replace too many AoE cards, or you would be left with no ways to clear the board in faster matchups.

I Used to love playing Quest Warrior since Un’Goro but since Throne has come out it just gets shit on by everything and your most likely to lose 60% of the time. It’s still fun to play but not for ranked anymore since the Battle Axe Nerf and just with everything else being played since Throne.

Disagree, quest rogue literally sucks. It’s been a while since I’ve seen quest rogues get passed rank 5. They rely mostly on chance and have no aggro counter measures. I think most 5+ ranked people would agree with this.

I think this is not a good deck. It is necessary to be very lucky in the beginning of the game to maintain control of the board or survive enogh to get the desired end of the game. In addition, against priest (potion of madness, kabal priests, whaterver), magician (secrets) and shaman (elementals) the spells did not let you get close to winning.
Perhaps the chance of this deck is against rogue or worlock because paladin and hunter will be playing difficult.
In high ranks, where games are slower, this deck can make a difference but to get to higher levels with it will be difficult.

I believe that something like eater of secrets is a necessary tech card for this deck especially when you play against a lot of mages because they usually stall for time with ice block and freeze until they finish you with burn, while you can’t armour up because you must have already played sulfuras. So I think that it’s possible to destroy that ice block with eater of secrets then finish your opponent with the 8 damage hero power.

The biggest win rate i have against is quest mage, because: A, you use alot of armor up and taunts, so they have to get a lot of additional cards to burst you down. B, if they are playing sorc apprintence + archmage you dirty rat twice and pull the archmage from their hand, meaning you will destroy their wincon. You just have to not missplay and you are good to go.

Currently pushing top 300 legend with this exact deck list. It is extremely solid value based deck with an extremely powerful win condition and amazing clear. Despite what people are saying in here it is extremely good against aggro decks (pirate warr, midrange hunter, murloc pally) and is extremely consistent and dependable with high late game power. Once you get your opponent down to single threats, which is extremely easy to do with this list, your quest hero power will win you the game.

It has also done well against both rogue archetypes (miracle and quest). Although if quest rogues get a god hand and can get caverns out early which happens sometimes, it can be hard to keep up with (this is true with any deck). Generally, against quest rogue, using this decks immense amount of clear potential is usually enough to keep quest rogue down. Once you get them down to one or two creatures, it is very easy to catch back up with your new hero power. And primordial drake + fishes is generally an instant win against quest rogue.

I’ve had the hardest time against freeze mage with this deck, simply because you are not able to put enough pressure early since your minions don’t do much damage – you have to resort to more crafty ways of winning a decent amount of the time (save your dirty rats for their doomsayers) and armor up as much as possible.

I was on the fence about Ornery Direhorn since it is a 6 drop, but its mana cost has rarely been an issue, and the card also acts as a secondary win condition with the option of windfury on adapt, and often turns what would normally be a 3-4 turn lethal into a 1-2 turn lethal type situation.

On the surface the deck looks like it is very easy to play, but in fact you really need to know its limits, use your health effectively as a resource, and how to use your clears effectively in every match-up. If you are just starting to use this list i would recommend playing it for an extended period of time.

On one of my recent streams I go over the deck list in more detail and talk about the approach towards different match ups.

If you are interested, you can find this content at twitch.tv/lauretano. I do not have a set stream schedule since i work full time, but i try to put informative content up there as much as possible.

Don’t craft this deck, it’s very bad in the current meta. It even loses to aggro decks, which is supposed to beat. It can’t handle all the deathrattle creatures from hunter, and it dies to pirate on turn 5 like any other slow deck. It can win vs the rogue quest via Brawls (why only one brawl in the above, I wonder, key card), but that deck loses horribly to everything else out there as well. Sleep with the fishes, very bad card, many many conditions must meet for it to do something.
With lucky draw, it can work, like everything else, of course.

(Please note that I’ve replaced an acolyte with Elise, purely for fun. This is not necessary at all.)

My experience has been the exact opposite.

I haven’t lost to a single pirate warrior, even with below average draws and not mulliganing away the quest. Ravaging ghoul and sleep with the fishes is an auto win, even having just the ghoul puts you in favor to win once you clear his early minions (which mostly have 1 health). Whirlwind + sleep with the fishes also wins you instantly. Later on, dirty rat can pull his kor’kron elites or battlecry pirates, and brawl is self explanatory. Overall, almost no play in your deck doesn’t either put a wall in front of the pirate or clear his minions.

Rogues…I’ve won most games bar the one or two where they somehow manage to get the quest by like turn 2 or 3 based off preps and crazy opening hands. And I expect most decks to lose to this anyway, so let’s consider the regular case. In regular case, if you maximize your odds of getting a dirty rat and get one, you have a good shot of slowing the rogue down to a point where it’s unwinnable for them as they have to expend more and more resources to stall while they draw cards. In the case they still manage to get the quest on turns 4-5, taunts such as direhorn hatchling and bloodhoof brave are actually awesome to have. They take favorable trades but have to bounce the minions back or end up losing them to sleep with the fishes, primordial drake, execute, etc. Brawl is always good to have, sometimes you wished you had 2 but I’ve still stuck with 1. It’s because I end up lasting so long that I draw it anyway, hell I’ve even redrawn and finished the quest in one game. The Rogue will often try to put maximum pressure on your board by flooding it with 5/5s while expending their card draw. Unfortunately for them, even if they play around your brawl you have other tools to dispose of a smaller board with up to 3 minions. Ultimately, they too run out of steam, while you have lots in the tank.

Elemental tempo mage is slower than pirate warrior, and unfortunately for the mage you have plenty of aoe to clear their shit. Giving them stonehill defender or tar creeper as mirror entity is just fine. Slower mage decks lose to sulfuras. Non-exodia burn decks are faster but have to distribute spells between your growing board and your increasing armor.

Exodia mage and Elemental shaman run into the same problem – you just need to play the taunt minions to get sulfuras, freezing or devolving them doesn’t slow down your quest and once your weapon is out the mage can’t freeze your hero power. As for shaman, it’s a bit tougher since they are faster and totems can soak up a random sulfuras shot here and there but you have decent AoE tools to deal with them, and they’re less common than a lot of the other decks I’ve mentioned.

I’ve only played against hunter twice and almost died, but the hunter “died first” smashing his face into my taunts and using kill commands on them as well. All hunters, especially can definitely pose a threat, and may even be favored but I can’t say anything about the latter yet.

Overall, this is the most well rounded deck in standard right now, which is why people like to play it.

Can i replace curator? Different taunt? Because in this deck we have 1 dragon and 1 beast (after shuffle 2 beast’s) and maybe we can discover another from stonehill defender. Or this is very important in this deck and without this card is bad?

This is not a top deck at all, it is way to slow, and completing the quest puts you on a disadvantage when loosing the armour power. Most decks just run over your one per turn crap taunts … have been testing this one, so far i still need to win my first game with it…
I’m either to slow in developing the board and get killed by turn 7 or 8 or either he combos out and i die.

It’s one of the best decks in the current meta, but it’s impossible to say how it will look like after the meta stabilizes. I suspect that the deck will stay in the meta, but no one can be sure. If you really want to be safe, I’d wait another week or two before crafting things.

This deck is amazing, and fairly cheap to craft (six epics and two legendaries). Even if the deck doesn’t survive the current meta, the components are all solid, and Dirty Rat is amazing against Rogue, Mage, and Priest since they all hold their key minions until they have the combo. Pulling them with Rat and then killing them immediately gives you amazing advantage.

And is there a possibility to add Cult Master to this list ? I played it in my Quest Taunt Warrior deck and I think it’s a great card engine behind a wall of taunts (I tried it before with protect the king and it was in most cases a huge hand re-filler)

I still don’t have the Drake either so I was trying Ysera but the problem was that you can’t play a 9-drop and hero power in the same turn so I can see why the Drake is so popular. Deathwing might be an okay tech until you can craft him though.

It is almost impossible to win against Quest Rogue and Chaos Mage. I don’t know about Miracle rogue.

The problem against the former two decks is that Taunt Warrior is too slow and you can’t interfere with their gameplan. The only way to win is Dirty Rat. In fact I would automatically include that card into taunt warrior.

It’s true that the only feasible way to win against Quest Rogue is Dirty Rat. However, I’ve found that Stonehill Defender is key in the Chaos Mage matchup. You need to need to get your upgraded hero power online ASAP. Eight damage per turn that can’t be frozen really puts them under pressure.

I will not recommend this deck to play in current meta…
Too slow, no heal, no armour. 100% loose against aggro deck like Pirate War, Quest Rogue, Tempo MAge and all others.
This deck is about 13-14 rank, so bad , so bad…

I prefer to run -1 Drake +1 Deathwing. I am finding vs other control, Deathwing with quest completed wins in fatigue situations. No one really holds on to a hex or power word death expecting a deathwing to be dropped. All you gotta do is count the removals and use Deathwing once you know he can’t be removed.

Many times I let opponent drop his winning play on fatigue, then I drop Deathwing and they quit.

I think they took Sjow’s list because he hit Rank 1 with it and there probably weren’t many Quest Rogue/Mages there. But I agree with @Misplay, Dirty Rat is needed as long as Exodia Mage/Quest Rogue are on ladder.

Ornery Direhorn (or 6 mana taunts) are not great because you can’t play Sulfuras and Hero Power after you played the Direhorn. 5 mana is the sweet spot.

For Primordial Drake versus Direhorn Hatchling, usually one DIrehorn is enough for Curator. If it comes before Curator it will die meaning you pull its Deathrattle. If Curator is first you pull the original copy. Primordial Drake you need 2x copies unless you have more draw elsewhere to make up consistency.

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